just not smiling

Every­one is laugh­ing at that pic­ture of all the women sit­ting be­hind Ka­vanaugh mak­ing ‘WTF’ faces, and they should be. It IS fun­ny, and I’m nev­er one to tell peo­ple they shouldn’t be laugh­ing. Hu­mor is im­por­tant. When we lose our abil­i­ty to laugh, we will tru­ly be dead.

I just want to ask that you all think about some­thing, and I speak from ex­pe­ri­ence with this: As fun­ny as their fa­cial ex­pres­sions are, those are the right fa­cial ex­pres­sions for them to have. They are en­tire­ly ap­pro­pri­ate. Those women are re­act­ing pre­cise­ly the way they should to the sit­u­a­tion, and their faces are con­vey­ing those re­ac­tions be­cause that’s what hu­man faces do.

Women are told all the time not to let their emo­tions show on their faces. Or show at all, pe­ri­od. All too of­ten, any re­ac­tion is writ­ten off as an over­re­ac­tion. Get­ting an­gry, up­set, frus­trat­ed, con­fused, shocked, dis­gust­ed – any­thing that can’t be clas­si­fied as ‘hap­py’ and ‘agree­able’ – is con­sid­ered an ‘at­ti­tude’ that women are told they should sim­ply just change, and then every­thing will be better.

Mo­ti­va­tion­al posters with pret­ty pic­tures and quotes about at­ti­tudes are not in­tend­ed for men. Trust me, men don’t re­al­ly care about that shit. They don’t have to, and they aren’t re­al­ly ex­pect­ed to care, either.

That idea – that you are in con­trol of your at­ti­tude and a change in at­ti­tude changes every­thing – is in­tend­ed for women, and it’s a form of gaslight­ing. It sub­tly im­plies, “Your at­ti­tude is what’s mak­ing things dif­fi­cult for you – not the in­jus­tices you’re fac­ing, not the un­fair way things are be­ing done, not the ob­vi­ous dis­par­i­ties in pow­er and con­trol and sta­tus, not the sys­tem be­ing rigged against you be­cause you are not ad­e­quate­ly rep­re­sent­ed – it’s your at­ti­tude, and the ONLY thing you GET to be in con­trol of is your at­ti­tude, so GET it un­der con­trol and change it fast.”

When you don’t want to go to a par­ty be­cause you think the hosts are bad cooks and it’s bor­ing over there and they al­ways want to play scrab­ble and you don’t like scrab­ble, yeah, that’s a bad at­ti­tude. You’re just be­ing a whin­er. This is ab­solute­ly one of those sce­nar­ios where you should try to be more pos­i­tive: You have friends who like you enough to share their time, food, and in­ter­ests with you. That’s pre­cious. So just in case any­one doesn’t get what I’m try­ing to say here, I’m NOT say­ing there’s no such thing as a bad at­ti­tude or that peo­ple (men or women) don’t ever have one.

What I AM say­ing is that women are peo­ple, and peo­ple re­act, and when peo­ple re­act, they show those re­ac­tions on their faces. And most of the time, peo­ple re­act to things in a way that’s ab­solute­ly reasonable.

If you re­al­ly want to sim­pli­fy this con­cept, just think about how of­ten women are told to smile, com­pared to how of­ten men are told to smile. I look as hi­lar­i­ous­ly stu­pid try­ing to force a fake smile as I do try­ing to pre­tend to look an­gry when I’m not. Ask my hus­band Aaron. When I’m play­ing at be­ing an­gry just to be a goof, I’m not fool­ing any­one. He knows it.

When my smile is gen­uine, it’s be­cause I’m feel­ing gen­uine­ly hap­py. So when I look pissed off, or sad, or dis­gust­ed, it’s prob­a­bly be­cause I am gen­uine­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing those things for very real rea­sons, and be­cause I’m a hu­man be­ing with real emo­tions and feel­ings, I’m go­ing to show it.

There was noth­ing to smile about yesterday.
 

—emi­ly duchaine

Flom­mist Emi­ly Duchaine lives in the Pa­cif­ic North­west. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and lis­ten to the Talk­ing Heads. She pre­tends to be a pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness­woman most days. Copy­right © 2018 Emi­ly Duchaine.

MOR D’ARTÍCULOS  MOR FLOMM !

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